Sexy Ads 'unwrap' the mystery of safer sex!

When we turned 10 years old we did a campaign with Opt to help celebrate their 50th Anniversary. Now we're a teenager (13 years of Hello Cool World!) and we' thought we'd revisit these ads again. As far as we know our ad is the only example of a full frontal UNWRAPPED condom that's been on TV! : )

Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.

I love December 1st, not only because it's the day when men all over Canada shave off their terrible (but philanthropic) moustaches, but also because it's World AIDS Day.

It's a cause close to my heart- I spent a summer in the Cook Islands interning with the Pacific Island AIDS Foundation and have worked, volunteered or researched for various HIV/AIDS projects and organizations.

This World AIDS Day, I encourage you to check out It's Different Now, a great new BC campaign advocating for routine HIV testing. If you've ever had sex, you should know your status!

Here are some sobering facts about HIV/AIDS in Canada:

As of 2009, there were approximately 65,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada

More than a quarter of them (26%) are unaware of their status

Aboriginal Canadians comprise 11% of new diagnoses, but are less than 4% of the population.

Prior to 1999, women represented 12% of all positive HIV tests in Canada prior to 1999; as of 2009, they are 26% of positive HIV tests.**

Those numbers can be frightening, but the truth is the vast majority of HIV tests are negative. And in the unlikely possibility that your test was positive, HIV is more like a chronic illness than the death sentence it was in the 1980s. There are effective treatments and therapies, and more being developed all the time. When it comes to your health, it's always better to take action.

I had a rapid HIV test during a recent UBC Sexual Health Fair, and even though I'm low-risk I felt a twinge of nervousness: What if the test was positive? What would I do? How would I react? Fortunately, there were kind and informative nurses to talk me through the process, and the relief I felt on seeing my negative test result outweighed my nerves. It's gratifying to know that I am informed about my health.

If you've never had an HIV test, get inspired by World AIDS Day! It's Different Now has a map of drop-in clinic sites. Talk to your friends about testing. Talk to your parents! During Pap Awareness Week we encouraged you to make a Pap test into a bonding experience and encourage the women you love to go to the Pap clinic with you. On World AIDS Day, we'd like you to take a friend to get an HIV test. You'll be doing the responsible thing and educating yourselves.

Michelle is a freelance writer and anthropologist with a Master of Public Health from UBC. Her passions are promoting health and building community. She's worked in grassroots community organizations in Vancouver, Victoria and Oceania.

Orgasm Inc. is a fine and funny film about a subject that in 2011 shouldn't be shocking, but that still is. The shock factor, for me, was not in any explicit sex scenes, but in the revelation that after Kinsey and decades of feminism, not to mention South Park, too many women and men still have no idea how to find the clitoris! What should be shocking, but is intead business as usual, is how big pharma preys upon our desire for desire in order to pitch us more pills. Orgasm Inc. is playing in several cities this June - including Vancouver's Cinemateque. For details on upcoming screenings click here.

I went to to the film with friend and research associate Cindy Masaro when it was part of SFU's conference "The Medicalization of Sex". Then I caught up with director Liz Canner to do an interrview with her. We'll be posting clips of the interview as part of our Hello Cool World Vlog series. We'll also be talking to Cindy about her research and thoughts on the film. For more about the film, links to the trailer etc. read on...

The Burnaby school district is under fire from parents who are concerned about a new inclusive policy whose "objective is to ensure all school community members learn to work together in an atmosphere of respect and safety "free from homophobia, transphobia, antigay harassment and exclusion, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

Parents should support any initiative that seeks to make schools a safer, happier place for all students. The protest and fear of children being "sexualized" or led morally astray speaks volumes about the ignorance and bigoted attitudes of those parents. It isn't enough to say, as many of the parents do, that essentially while they don't "have a problem" with queer and transfolk, they don't want to hear about them in their children's schools. That is, in fact, having a problem with queer and transfolk; it's called homophobia, and their protests are a demonstration of the necessity of having these issues raised thoughtfully in schools. Clearly many children aren't being taught tolerance, respect and understanding at home.

On January 24th, 2011, a Toronto police officer enraged sexual rights advocates around the world when he told a group of middle school students that women should "avoid dressing like sluts" if they didn't want to be victimized. The response was a SlutWalk, where more than a thousand women and men marched through downtown Toronto in provocative outfits, holding signs that pointed out clothing does not equal consent. The phenomenon has taken off, with SlutWalks springing up all over North America. And on May 15th, we'll be celebrating our own SlutWalk here in Vancouver.

While many are praising SlutWalks for seizing on our zeitgeist of humour-as-political-weapon, I've read a lot of responses to the first SlutWalk that distressed me. Critics are have drawn comparisons that go a lot like, "I wouldn't leave my car unlocked with the windows rolled down in a bad neighbourhood if I didn't want it to get stolen, so don't wear a short skirt if you don't want a man to rape you." This is a bad analogy for a lot of reasons, the least of which is not that my body is not a car.

FROM RISK TO PLEASURE MANAGEMENT

This website & blog is a space to showcase our Sex Ed clients and reflect on our work and philosophy around sexual health and advertising. It's a portal to campaigns, but it's also an exploration of our process, as well as our beliefs around what works to promote safer sex, healthy relationships & sexual rights, and why we think the key to being effective is to address "the pleasure deficit" in sexual health education.